Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 19-142-Caliphate-ISIS-50

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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 19-142-Caliphate-ISIS-50

Russian special forces 'embedded in ISIS,' top official saysFeb 9 Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov claims Russian intelligence has successfully infiltrated Islamic State terror group. Pro-Kremlin Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has claimed spies from his region of Russia are being sent to infiltrate the Islamic State group (ISIS or IS) and assist Moscow in its bombing campaign in Syria.

Kadyrov, who has led the North Caucasus region of Chechnya since 2007, made the claims in a preview of a documentary set to air on state television on Wednesday.The documentary claims that "agents from special forces from Chechnya were embedded" in ISIS training camps to collect intelligence and help identify targets for Russian air strikes. Quoting Kadyrov, it said that the "best fighters" from mostly Muslim Chechnya have managed to create an "intricate agent network directly inside IS," although some have been killed. "We unfortunately have had some losses," Kadyrov said in an interview in the documentary. "But they knew where they were going, what they were getting involved in. They went there so we can live peacefully in Chechnya and all over Russia." C: 8 Dec, Isis has executed five more Russian nationals after accusing them of "spying" in its territories, according to Russian media reports. Last week, a video was released by the militant group showing a man dubbed the Russian "Jihadi John" purportedly executing a "Chechen spy". The executioner has been identified by officials in the North Caucasus as Anatoly Zemlyanka. The Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov reportedly wrote on Instagram that the 28-year-old was an ethnic Russian and wanted by the police.The preview showed Kadyrov at a training camp in Chechnya where heavily-armed men were shooting at targets and completing obstacle courses. Chechen agents in ISIS "gather information about the structure and numbers of the terrorists and set targets for bombings," the documentary claimed. There was no way to immediately verify Kadyrov's claims. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out a ground operation in Syria.Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment on what Kadyrov said.

A source in the Chechen leadership told Interfax news agency on Tuesday that "there have been people from Chechnya in the conflict zone on the territory of Syria and Iraq since the emergence of IS." "These consist of self-organised groups of young men who aim to fight the terrorist organisation," the source said, adding that "none of them are members of the Russian armed forces or working for the interior ministry."ISIS fighters in December released a video showing the beheading of an ethnic Chechen man who had made a filmed confession that he worked for Russian special services to spy on ISIS in Syria.

Kadyrov at the time conceded that Russian secret services were operating in Syria to "carry out missions to neutralize bandits", but said the execution victim was not working with them. At the same time, some Muslim Chechens and other Russians have gone to Syria to support ISIS jihadists. According to figures released by Russia's FSB security service in December, nearly 2,900 Russians are fighting or have fought with the extremists in Iraq and Syria.

WASHINGTON – Feb 9 Islamic State is likely to "increase the pace and lethality" of its transnational attacks, US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vincent Stewart said on Monday. Speaking to a security conference, Stewart linked his warning to the extremist movement's establishment of "emerging branches" in Mali, Tunisia, Somalia, Bangladesh

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster”― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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and Indonesia. "And it wouldn't surprise me to see them further extend" operations from the Sinai Peninsula deeper into Egypt, he said.

Feb 9, Attacks by Islamist militants in Kenya dropped to the lowest level in three years in 2015, a result of better intelligence gathering by the authorities and infighting among fighters in neighboring Somalia over their allegiance to Islamic State and al-Qaeda. The number of militant attacks in Kenya dropped to 46 last year, about half the figure of 2014 and the lowest since 2011, according to data compiled by Verisk Maplecroft, a Bath, England-based risk consultancy. Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks carried out in Kenya since 2012, including the assault on Westgate. A dispute between members of the group in the second half of 2015 over their allegiances to al-Qaeda or Islamic State, also known as Daesh, probably contributed to the decline in the number of attacks last year, Emma Gordon, senior Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, said by phone from Uganda. “Infighting in al-Shabaab between Daesh and al-Qaeda loyalists preoccupied the group in the latter half of 2015 and reduced their focus on external attacks,” Gordon said. “Also, a number of pro-Daesh al-Shabaab members have been purged, many of whom are understood to be of Kenyan origin.” The declining trend needs to be sustained in order to have any substantial impact on investor sentiment toward Kenya, said Gatimu.“The fear is that the government has not been able to fight corruption in the security sector, which is a huge hindrance in terms of securing citizens,” he said.

In the 18 months that the United States has been working to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the group, it has grown to become a global force that can strike targets in Europe, Asia, Africa and America.The self-declared “caliphate” that in June 2014 was localized in Iraq and Syria now has nearly 50 affiliates or supporting groups in 21 countries. It has declared 33 “official provinces” in 11 of those countries

In Libya, the Islamic State has doubled its presence over the past year to between 5,000 and 6,500 fighters

Asian security officials say the Jakarta attack demonstrates the Islamic State’s appeal in normally quiescent Muslim populations, in such nations as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The pace of Islamic State operations, and its propaganda skill, are illustrated by the daily dispatches of its Al-Bayan online news service.

The political discussion so far has been mostly sound bites and speeches, rather than analysis that would lead to sustainable actions. This problem isn’t going away; it’s getting worse. A fresh wave of arrests of suspected Islamic State militants around the world, as well as the reported disruption of a range of intended plots, indicates the growing global reach of the group. Meanwhile, through Western countries, arrests of Islamic State supporters and activists have continued.

Europe, cultural identity under attack, must regroup and form grand strategy to battle extremism at home and abroad. The enemy is not Islam nor the Muslims still migrating into Europe, but a small minority of brutal people who are hijacking Islam. Their intent is not to propagate a new political system. The goal is simple, trite and not religious: destruction of the Western system including democracy, individual freedom and economic globalization. What comes after does not matter. The extremists ensnare young people as recruits, selecting those who vent anger against their societies, political systems and





parents. The young people crave respectability – acknowledgement as someone to be reckoned with, to be taken seriously, and the Islamic State

delivers. The hardcore, intellectual elite and determined leadership of ISIS and the young recruits share one attribute, and that is hatred of Western societies.

Little can be done about the hardcore except understanding that the battle comes down to eliminating “them or us.

Europeans and Americans must recognize that agendas in the Middle East and North Africa include conflicting goals originating from more than 2,000 years of history – religious confrontations between Sunni Muslims and Shiites, tribal conflicts, internal and old colonial disagreements, and a revival of old confrontations among the remnants of the Arab, Ottoman, Iranian and Russian empires. As outsiders, the Europeans and Americans could easily be lured into focusing on one conflict that unfolds into massive warfare. The main battleground for the United States and Europe is at home. The EU faces tough political questions and must determine how many refugees and migrants can be admitted while stopping the political chaos and fear. The task is immediate, and the consequences could be the long-term future of Europe and its very identity.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) now controls the territory it held in 2011 and territory it seized in early 2015. It also is enforcing shari'a in al Mukalla, Hadramawt. Meanwhile, the Islamic State in Iraq and al Sham (ISIS) in Yemen may be looking to reassert itself after two months of limited activity.AQAP is reconstituting control over the cities within the “emirate” it held in 2011-2012. AQAP militants seized control of Azzan city in Shabwah on February 1 after the withdrawal of local tribal militias. Militants set up checkpoints controlling access to the city and occupied the local government buildings. AQAP controlled Azzan in 2011, but





ceded control in June 2012 to Yemeni military forces. Azzan sits atop one of Yemen’s primary trans-national roads, making it an important trading

crossroads for Shabwah, Abyan, and Hadramawt. AQAP controls the major cities along the route: al Mukalla, Azzan, and Zinjibar. AQAP may also be operating from al Hawta, north of Aden, as of January 25. AQAP now effectively controls the primary road from Abyan through Hadramawt and operates openly in Abyan, parts of al Bayda and Shabwah, and Hadramawt.AQAP continues to enforce extreme shari'a in al Mukalla, Hadramawt, conducting a second stoning as punishment. AQAP publicly stoned a man to death for adultery in al Mukalla on February 1. AQAP stoned a woman to death for the same crime in early January, the first use of such a punishment during AQAP’s control of al Mukalla. A large crowd attended this most recent stoning, and an Ansar al Sharia-linked Twitter account published photos of the event. AQAP prohibited photography during the January execution. Stonings are extremely rare in Yemen.ISIS resumed its anti-coalition campaign in Aden and may also be recruiting foreign fighters to support activity in Yemen. ISIS Wilayat Aden-Abyan conducted its first attack since December 6, 2015. ISIS deployed a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (SVBIED) against the Aden presidential palace on January 28. The attack targeted Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has intermittently travelled to Aden from exile in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia over the past year. The bomber was Dutch, making him the first known foreign ISIS suicide bomber in Yemen and possibly indicating that ISIS has foreign recruits operating in the country. ISIS Wilayat Aden-Abyan orchestrated a second SVBIED attack on a security checkpoint in Aden on January 29. ISIS in Yemen’s activity noticeably dropped in late 2015 after the emergence of well-publicized discord within the group over the leadership in Yemen. (Translation available by subscription through SITE.)AQAP will continue to consolidate control and expand into new areas in Yemen without resistance from the coalition or the al Houthi-Saleh movement. ISIS maintains a footprint in Yemen and its attacks in Aden will further destabilize the situation.

The bloodbath is real, yet no one plans for a future – for “Life after Isis. Cees are advised AQ dos!As many as 34 militants groups from around the world had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group by mid-December 2015, and the number is expected to increase this year, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said. The Islamic State group poses an "unprecedented threat" as it has been successful in bringing militant groups from Philippines, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Libya and Nigeria under its fold, and has been fast-spreading in West and North Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, Ban Ki-moon added in the UN report.The United States and its allies are probably many weeks or even months away from launching a new military campaign against ISIS in Libya, despite mounting concern about the group’s spread there and its attacks on oil infrastructure, U.S. officials say. The Pentagon has warned in recent weeks of the dangers posed by ISIS’ growth in Libya. The U.S. is developing military options, which were discussed at an inconclusive meeting last week of President Barack Obama and his top security aides, officials said.

A plan must be made for ‘life after Isis’ in the Middle EastIn the Second World War, Allied leaders planned for the post-war world – a ‘United





Nations’ – years before the conflict ended. We must do the same for the Middle East. There are times in the Middle East when nightmares and

delusions take the place of the real and growing tragedy which is consuming the Arab lands. More and more earnest are the calls for peace as more and more nations launch more and more air raids, from Kabul to the Mediterranean, and down through Sinai and Yemen and across to Libya. The bloodbath is real, yet no one plans for a future – for “Life after Isis”. By my reckoning, there are now 11 different national air forces bombing five different Muslim countries to “degrade and destroy” their enemies. But what comes afterwards?History teaches us that for 100 years now, the people of this magnificent, dangerous region have sought justice and received only injustice. Foreign and proxy occupation, corruption and dictatorship – the hands of the torturer – have taken from them the one value which so many millions finally sought in the great Arab awakening of 2011: dignity. Yet what are we doing about this? Why have we never addressed the great historical injustices which have caused this human earthquake? Instead, we conjure up imaginary armies – as if the real ones aren’t frightening enough. We dream up 35,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria when perhaps there are a thousand – and 20,000 Afghan Hazara Shia and hordes of Iraqi Shia militiamen in Syria and another 10,000 Hezbollah – and this is before we even remember David Cameron’s ghost army of 70,000 warriors ready to fight for democracy. The Turks are about to invade Syria, we are told, but they haven’t. Then there are the thousands of Saudi soldiers which our favourite Gulf monarchy is ready to send to Syria to fight Isis – although presumably they’ll have to leave their air-conditioned Mercedes limousines back at the start line. As for the Russians, I’m surprised nobody has yet suggested that they arrived in Syria with snow on their boots.This is insanity. Europeans react with horror when a million refugees cross their borders – yet while it’s informative to know that Hungary thinks it is the frontier of Christendom, no one has suggested that we need to address the original problems of all these poor people. We obsess about persuading Turkey to stop the refugees and asylum seekers pouring into Europe, but without any long-term planning for a new Middle East which will reduce their numbers. We blather on about how we are suffering the greatest movement of refugees since the Second World War. But in the Second World War (the real one), Allied leaders were planning for the post-war world – a “United Nations” – years before the end of hostilities. Today, I cannot find in my files any record of a single Arab or world leader who has spoken of what the Middle East might look like in the future. Why can’t we plan ahead now?At the end of the First World War – the war which destroyed the Ottoman empire and crushed the last caliphate a few years later – many of the American diplomats in the collapsing empire and the NGOs of the time (they were missionaries then, of course) argued for one great Arab nation; one in which Muslims – and Christians and Jews and other minorities – would be citizens of a land which stretched from Morocco to the Mesopotamian-Persian border (the frontier of what is now Iraq and Iran). But of course the US lost its interest in such Wilsonian dreams, while the Brits and French had other plans and moved in to take the “mandates” of their choice. Thus began the age of humiliation, of Western occupiers and local butchers and hangmen which stripped all these peoples of their honour. And now, 100 years on, we see its frightening apogee in the gruesome “caliphate” which is spreading Ebola-like around the world. But what the poor old Middle East needs now are not more air strikes, but an intellectual search by all those who still live there – and by those who have fled – for what kind of a homeland they want to live in.





What institutions can replace the broken ramparts of the old Middle East? What can replace, for example, the doggerel Arab television preachers who

have so much to answer for, many of them encouraged by the Gulf rulers? How did Islam become so weakened by these people? An old friend of mine (a Sunni Muslim, if you want to know) put it very well to me at the weekend. “Islam is afraid of Isis,” he said. “Isis isn’t afraid of Islam.”So for starters, why not plan for a new Middle East founded not on oil and gas – though they will remain – but on education? Not on dictators’ palaces but on universities; not on torture chambers but on libraries. Islam lay at the heart of the ancient universities of the Middle East. Scholarship was not dominated by Islam – faith and religion were themselves enhanced and enriched by knowledge. From education comes justice. And justice – only justice – will destroy Isis. This may sound preachy but I suspect it would make a lot of sense to the Arabs – and the Jews – who lived in Spain, in Andalusia, 700 years ago (until, of course, we chucked them out).I have noted before that Abu Dhabi – abjuring the madness of Dubai – has placed a special need on first-class university education for its citizens. And across the Middle East, lack of education – a policy fostered by dictators, of course – lies like a cancer. For lack of education actually is a substance that spreads. Look at the tens of thousands of Syrian refugee children in Lebanon who will one day return to their ruins without even the gift of literacy to pass on to their own future children.I cannot stand the old clichés about “when the guns fall silent”. But schools and universities are going to be more deadly to Isis than any air-strike. That’s how you deal with nightmares

(C Remember Al Zawahir: "the road to Jerusalem passes through Cairo.) The IS branch in Egypt, Sinai Province, was essentially a re-branding of an existing group known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which first emerged in 2011 in the wake of the Egyptian revolution. The Libyan branch of IS has been the most active since it was formally embraced in November and its propaganda output has most closely resembled that of IS branches in Syria and Iraq.Three distinct Libyan IS "provinces" were announced in November - Barqah in the east, Tripoli in the west and Fazzan in the south. Little has been heard of the Algerian branch of IS since the pledge of allegiance from Jund al-Khilafah was accepted by Baghdadi in November. IS drew the ire of al-Qaeda's Yemen branch (AQAP) when Al-Baghdadi unilaterally announced new "provinces" in Yemen and Saudi Arabia in November. The new Afghanistan-Pakistan branch, led by former Pakistan Taleban commander Hafiz Said Khan, was the first franchise to be formally announced by IS following the November flurry of allegiances. Boko Haram's high profile pledge of allegiance in March was widely trumpeted by IS, which is now referring to the group as its "West Africa Province". A pledge of allegiance by jihadists in Tunisia was promoted by IS in May, two months after the group claimed credit for the 18 March attack on the Bardo Museum in the capital Tunis. The Caucasus is the latest jihadist front to be claimed by IS, encroaching on the domain of the al-Qaeda-aligned Caucasus Emirate.IS announced on 23 June that its leader Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi had accepted a pledge of allegiance from militants in the Russian republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. IS has now expanded into most areas where jihadist groups have a presence, with the notable exceptions of south-east Asia as well as east Africa, the latter region being dominated by the Somali al-Qaeda-affiliated group Al-Shabab.IS acknowledged in November last year that groups in Indonesia and the Philippines had





also pledged allegiance and that IS had accepted them.But it said further conditions needed to be met before new "provinces" were

formally announced.

Regards Cees***Feb 9 For the first time, the Islamic State (IS, former ISIS, ISIL) has targeted France’s right-wing National Front (FN) party and its supporters in a statement on the pages of its French-language propaganda magazine. In the latest issue of Dar al Islam, the jihadists published a photo of an FN rally with the caption “prime targets.”“The question is no longer whether France will be hit again by attacks like those of November… The only relevant question is the next target and the date,” the text read, as cited by Le Figaro. A photo of an FN rally with the accompanying quote was tweeted by Romain Caillet, an Islamist expert and historian of global jihadist movements.

TEHRAN (FNA 9 Feb )- Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani lashed out at the extremist ideology of Wahhabism, arguing that it is what created the ISIL terrorist group in the first place."ISIL is the spawn of the Takfiri ideology of Wahhabism, created for the political and security objectives of the hegemonic system," Shamkhani added, addressing the forum of 'Coalition of Elites against Terrorism' in Tehran on Tuesday. He underlined that ISIL is deisgned to promote the Takfiri ideoloy, its threat is not limited to the region, and the fight against it should never be limited to the region."All terrorist outfits are created to serve the interests of certain powers and their regional minions. They all also have an expiry date." Shamkhani noted.According to the Iranian official, some of the countries which advocate the ongoing war on ISIL are also the ones that support certain terrorist outfits, inlcuding the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as MEK, PMOI, NCRI). In relevant remarks last year, Commander of Iran’s Basij Volunteer Force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi had underlined the necessity for plans to confront Wahhabism as an immediate danger threatening the region."The arrogant world, headed by the US, has resorted to deception to undermine unity among the Muslim Iranian nation by creating rifts and differences to stir Shiite-Sunni strife and war to destroy the united lineup of the Ummah standing against it," he said.He also described Takfiri groups as the result of the penetration of the western spy agencies, specially from Britain, and said, "Takfir is the result of a London-created religion which eventually ends up in Wahhabism, Bahai'sm and religious hereditary."




Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 19-142-Caliphate-ISIS-50

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